Harpers insane approach to budgeting is an insult to seniors, handicapped and unemployed.

Exactly as I predicted week after week, month after month and year after year since this destroyer of the economy came to office..... his insane budget programs will catch up to him.

Information regarding the Canadian Pension Plan is displayed of the service Canada website in Ottawa on Tuesday, January 31, 2012. Under the Conservative government’s new rules, people denied disability benefits lose the opportunity to directly appeal their cases.
(Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

Ottawa tackles Social Security Tribunal benefit-claims backlog

 

A major backlog in benefit claims for Canadian seniors, the unemployed and people with disabilities is forcing Ottawa to expand the size of its Social Security Tribunal.

 

The government used a 2012 omnibus budget bill to create the new tribunal, which hears appeals related to the Canada Pension Plan, disability benefits and Employment Insurance and Old Age Security.

 

Now the Conservative government is using its latest budget bill, introduced on Thursday, to expand it. The new bill removes a line in the original law that capped the size of the tribunal at 74 full-time staff. It also removes limits on the number of hours part-time staff can work.

 

The government says the change will allow it to add employees to respond to a backlog of nearly 11,000 cases related to CPP and OAS.

 

“Lifting both of these caps will help alleviate the current backlog and prevent future backlogs,” a spokesperson for Employment and Social Development Canada said.

 

READ MORE: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-tackles-social-security-tribunal-benefit-claims-backlog/article21304700/

 

REFORM-A-CONS F"CKING THE LITTLE GUY